PopZit: It’s Gross But Still A Wicked Pop’em Up!

My nutty game of the month is PopZit, which generally centers around the iPhone’s pinch to zoom gesture but as you can probably guess it’s pinch to pop those zits on your chosen character’s face.

PopZit features the usual choice of difficulties, easy, medium and hard which you select before selecting your face. The game initially offers 6 different faces to choose from, 4 cartoon and 2 photo examples, highlighting the apps ability to use photos from your photo roll or from the iPhone camera. By tapping the plus symbol in the top right corner you can add your own picture adjust it to the right size and mask where the spots should or shouldn’t go. These images specifically can be sent to facebook, email or to your photo library just in case you fancy humiliating a friend wherever they may hide.

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Once on the face of your choice you have a dwindling time limit in which you must pop and remove all the spots from the face, keep your eyes peeled though as some lumps require a dab of cream to make them disappear. Only on popping the last spot (you have to be fast else they come back again) will the game be complete and ask for your name to go on the highscore board.

Sound wise you have a single sound track and a few sound effects, namely 3 sounds for the different spots with character reactions and more when you clear their face, unfortunately the game hands off volume control to the hardware with no individual volume controls to speak.

Interaction in this game needs tightening up as touch detection can be very erratic at times with some touches not being registered and some pinching gestures registering as taps to select spots which can be very infuriating on the harder levels, there also appears to be no way to view the high score board without completing a game and submitting one. Another oddment here is regardless of which difficulty is played your high score is put on the same score board making it somewhat unfair.

I think this game has potential but needs more polish on nearly every element